Flood deluge worsens in Bangladesh with millions affected

Flood deluge worsens in Bangladesh with millions affected
By Mohammad MAZED
Feni, Bangladesh (AFP) Aug 23, 2024

Flash floods wrought havoc in Bangladesh on Friday as the country recovers from weeks of political upheaval, with the death toll rising to 13 and millions more caught in the deluge.

The South Asian nation of 170 million people, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, has seen frequent floods in recent decades.

Monsoon rains cause widespread destruction every year, but climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.

"It's a catastrophic situation here," rescue volunteer Zahed Hossain Bhuiya, 35, told AFP from the worst-hit city of Feni. "We are trying to rescue as many people as we can."

Nur Islam, a shopkeeper in Feni, said his home had been completely submerged.

"Everything is underwater," the 60-year-old said.

Much of Bangladesh is made up of deltas where Himalayan rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, wind towards the sea after coursing through India.

All major tributaries of the two transnational rivers were overflowing, according to local media reports.

In India's hard-hit Tripura state, more than 23 people have died in the floods since Monday.

Bangladesh's disaster management ministry said in a bulletin that its latest toll of 13 deaths included fatalities in cities along the country's southeastern coast.

That included the main port city of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar, a district home to around a million Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar.

Areas east of the capital Dhaka were also badly hit including the city of Comilla, near the border with Tripura state in India.

Nearly 190,000 others were taken to emergency relief shelters, according to the bulletin, while altogether 4.5 million people had been affected in some way.

- Diplomatic tensions -

The floods come less than three weeks after the ouster of ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, who was forced to flee by helicopter to India, her government's biggest political patron, during a student-led uprising.

Hasina's 15-year rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.

She was replaced by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is heading an interim government facing the monumental task of charting democratic reforms ahead of expected new elections.

Asif Mahmud, a leader of the student protests that ousted Hasina, and who is now in Yunus' caretaker cabinet, had earlier accused India of "creating a flood" by deliberately releasing water from dams.

India's foreign ministry rejected the charge, saying its own catchment area had experienced the "heaviest rains of this year" this week, and that the flow of water downstream was due to "automatic releases".

Relentless downpours have yet to abate in Tripura state, with worst-hit Bagafa village recording 494 millimetres (19.4 inches) of rain in the 24 hours to Thursday.

State disaster agency official Sarat Kumad Das said most of the 23 people who have died in Tripura were killed in landslides while a few drowned in flood waters.

Tripura chief minister Manik Saha said the situation was "still concerning" with relief efforts ongoing in the worst-hit parts of the state.

"Food is being distributed there, and we are also exploring the possibility of airlifting supplies," he said in a statement. "We are praying for everyone's safety."

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government backed Hasina's rule over her rivals from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which it saw as closer to conservative Islamist groups.

Modi has offered his support to the Yunus administration.

Floods swamp Bangladesh as nation finds its feet after protests
Dhaka (AFP) Aug 22, 2024 - Floods triggered by torrential rains have swamped a swath of low-lying Bangladesh, disaster officials said Thursday, adding to the new government's challenges after weeks of political turmoil.

At least five people have died and hundreds of thousands are stranded in the floods in at least eight districts in southern and eastern areas.

"Around 2.9 million people have been affected and more than 70,000 people have been taken to shelters," Mohammad Nazmul Abedin, senior official in the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, told AFP.

Long-time premier Sheikh Hasina quit as prime minister this month and fled to India after weeks of deadly student-led protests, ending her 15-year autocratic rule.

The South Asian nation of 170 million people, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, has seen frequent floods in recent decades.

It is among the countries most vulnerable to disasters and climate change, according to the Global Climate Risk Index.

Three of those who died drowned in floodwaters in the southeastern region of Cox's Bazar, chief administrative officer of Ramu district Rasedul Islam said.

The annual monsoon rains cause widespread destruction every year, but climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.

The army and the navy have been deployed, with speedboats and helicopters rescuing those stranded by the swollen rivers.

Much of the country is made up of deltas where the Himalayan rivers the Ganges and the Brahmaputra wind towards the sea after coursing through India.

- 'Heaviest rains' -

Neighbouring India's foreign ministry rejected accusations it was to blame for the floods, denying it had deliberately released water from an upstream dam.

It said the catchment area had experienced the "heaviest rains of this year over the last few days", and that the flow of water downstream was due to "automatic releases".

Asif Mahmud, a key leader of the student protests that ousted Hasina, and now the sports minister in the interim cabinet, had accused India of not only hosting Hasina, but of "creating a flood" by deliberately releasing water from dams.

India said that was "factually not correct".

"Floods on the common rivers between India and Bangladesh are a shared problem inflicting sufferings to people on both sides, and requires close mutual cooperation towards resolving them," New Delhi's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Hasina's rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.

But Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government preferred Hasina over her rivals from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which it saw as closer to conservative Islamist groups.

Modi has offered his support to the new Bangladeshi leader Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is heading the caretaker administration.

A United Nations team arrived in Dhaka on Thursday to assess whether to investigate alleged human rights violations committed during the protests, when more than 450 people were killed -- many by police fire.

The UN rights office had said in a preliminary report last week that there were "strong indications, warranting further independent investigation, that the security forces used unnecessary and disproportionate force" during the protests.